What is Agile Science?

​Agile science is a people-centered, success-oriented, efficiently rigorous approach to make progress on sociotechnical problems.

Agile science is:

people-centered as it is grounded in the real-world needs of individuals.

success-oriented as we ground all evaluation and optimization on clearly defined criteria of success.

efficiently rigorous via the classic scientific concept of triangulation. We strive to clarify the most important assumption being made at a given moment and then evaluate it as efficiently and rigorously as possible. We then iterate and test again, often with a complementary but also efficient method for the stage of the process to balance strengths/limitations of the approaches.

The framing of problems as sociotechnical acknowledges that many problems are complex and involve how humans act and interact with others and how technologies are created and used by and for humans and how they influence humans. As such, agile science:

has been developed in the context of behavior change interventions as it is, arguably, the node of sociotechnical systems. The team is testing and expanding the approach into a broader array of health interventions including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, behavioral interventions, policy interventions, and interventions that combine these modalities. If you are interested in how agile science applies to domains outside of behavioral interventions, please contact us!

simplifies problems not by studying a phenomenon out of context but, instead, by decision-based evidence making to modularize the problem, bounding study to plausible options currently available to enable iterative but meaningful progress.

rejects the notion of a "definitive" trial as problems are too complex but, instead, draws from a wide range of strategies and approaches from different disciplines and domains to efficiently and rigorously test assumptions in a modular way (e.g., prototype-testing from human-centered design; simulation and dynamical modeling from control systems engineering; and randomized and factorial trials from the behavioral and health sciences). ​​​

The "PNA" of agile science is to make progress on problems in a precise, networked, and agile way. In agile science, we move:

from targeting insights about what works in general to precision on what works for whom and in what context. This is because people are different. Context matters. Both change.

from experts solving problems to diverse connected people with agency solving problems together. This is because the knowledge, experience and expertise to solve problems is increasingly distributed across a network, not a single person.

from linear problem-solving to agile problem solving, which includes iteration and continuous emphasis on achieving real-world success after each sprint. This is because of uncertainty when understanding the person/group being helped and their context (what we call a niche), a clear definition of success, and appropriate solutions that achieve success for the target group in a niche. ​